Friday, April 30, 2004 | 5:17 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION: May 2, 2004
Bobby Hatfield died in November, but Bill Medley, the surviving half of the legendary Righteous Brothers, is keeping their music alive.
Medley, 63, will perform a series of tribute shows at The Orleans beginning Wednesday.
During a recent telephone interview from his home in Los Angeles, Medley talked about his longtime friend and singing partner, their career together and their careers apart.
Las Vegas Sun: After Bobby Hatfield died, did you consider retiring?
Bill Medley: It never crossed my mind. I'm one of those guys who they're going to have to come get me with a shotgun to get me offstage.
Performing is such an important part of my life. Artistically, I need to do it. When Bobby passed, I had to scramble pretty quick, a little quicker than I would have liked. But the band -- I had like 15 people staring at me, "What are we gonna do? Do we retire?" That's when Michael Gaughan, the owner of The Orleans, stepped up.
Thank God for Michael Gaughan. He came to me and said, "I want to put you back to work," and he gave me and the band 11 weeks.
Sun: Are you satisfied with the show?
BM: I am extremely happy. I can't say it's been easy, but getting back to work was the last piece of the puzzle to my being normal. Now that we're all back onstage, we feel better.
Sun: Describe the format of the concert.
BM: Basically, it's a Righteous Brothers show, a celebration of Righteous Brothers music, all of our songs. We did an album last year, a live album. I can electronically put Bobby into the show, which I do for "Lovin' Feeling" and "Soul and Inspiration." I do a video and a tribute to Bobby during "Unchained Melody."
It's a celebration, a fun show. There are some emotional moments, but it's just going to be a good show. I'm real happy about it.
Sun: You and Bobby Hatfield began performing together in 1962. How did that come about?
BM: We were both raised in Orange County, Calif. Bobby had a small group in Anaheim, I had a small group in Santa Ana. People kept telling me, "Boy, you've got to hear this guy, Bobby Hatfield." And people kept telling Bobby the same about me.
So, we started going in and watching each other perform. Then, a mutual friend of ours, who had been working Vegas, wanted to quit traveling. He took Bobby and Bobby's drummer, myself and my guitar player and he put us together and we were the Paramours for about a year.
Sun: What was your first recording?
BM: "Little Latin Lupe Lu." By then, fans were calling us the Righteous Brothers, so we recorded under that name.
Sun: Fans saw you and Hatfield as being joined at the hip. How much alike were you?
BM: There were differences in our lives, but not all that different. He had his family, I had mine. He had his friends, I had mine. And we had mutual friends -- but most of our mutual friends were the guys in the band, which is an entirely other family.
We didn't hang much. I wasn't ever a hanger. Actually, neither was Bobby. For the last 10 years in Vegas, Bobby would get offstage at the end of a performance, come out of his dressing room, go to the casino, play video poker for about three hours, go back to his room and go to bed. That was his schedule. Me, I have a house here so I get off, have dinner with some of the band members, or with family or friends, and then I drive home.
When I was younger, that was a different story.
Sun: Is it true you and he wanted to be lounge performers?
BM: Yeah. Well, we liked Louis Prima and Keely Smith. We liked their energy -- we wanted to be the rock 'n' roll version. We wanted to come to Las Vegas and do that, but some hit records got in the way.
We actually worked in a lounge at the Sands in '65. Frank Sinatra was in the showroom.
Sun: You split with Hatfield in 1968. What caused that?
BM: I had started out as a singer/songwriter. In '68, all the hippie kind of stuff started coming in, music was changing a lot. For the first time we were having a little trouble getting our records played on the air.
Bobby and I made it right away. The first song we recorded was a hit. The Righteous Brothers weren't really a planned thing, not something we had worked on for years to get going. So when it started to get a little rough for airplay, I just decided it was probably a good time to finish.
Sun: What did Hatfield think about that?
BM: Bobby was disappointed, and rightfully so. He just wanted to sing, to be a Righteous Brother. He did take on a new partner for about a year, but they didn't seem to be very successful and so he kind of worked on his own for a while.
He wasn't angry or anything, just disappointed.
Sun: How did you get back together in '74?
BM: I was working at the lounge at the Hilton, where Elvis was playing. Then Bobby got a job working over at the Flamingo. We were in town at the same time, so I'd run over there when he was on, jump onstage and perform a song or two. And he would come over to my gig and do the same thing. Both of us were surprised at how crazy people went when they saw us together.
I was pretty much burned out on the songwriting thing. I lived that dream and found out where it was going or not going. We decided it was a great time to go back, and we had success right away with "Rock 'n' Roll Heaven," which was No. 1 or No. 2 -- it was the fastest-rising record we ever had.
Sun: How long did the reunion last?
BM: About two years. In '76, my ex-wife passed away and our son, who was 10, came to live with me and I became a single parent. I retired for about six years, doing very little. I did enough to keep my artistic soul alive. I opened a restaurant and did some other stuff, just to stay busy.
Sun: You went country in the '80s?
BM: Yeah. Kenny Rogers, a real good friend of mine, ended up being a country giant, and he calls me and says, "My producer wants to produce you. Would you come to Nashville and give it a shot?" I wasn't doing much of anything and I happen to love country music. My dad was a Texan. I love all kinds of street music -- blues, gospel, country, especially the simplicity and storytelling of country.
Sun: How did the country music career go?
BM: I went to Nashville and worked with Kenny and actually ended up, like in '85 or so, as the opening act for Alabama for a couple of years. They loved my rock 'n' roll edge. It was great. And I was runner-up that year for new male vocalist of the year -- after 25 years in the business.
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